Daily online Meeting for Worship
Each morning from 7:30 to 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time, Quaker Center hosts a silent, online half-hour online Meeting for Worship in the manner of Friends. The Meeting uses a website called Chatzy that provides a text-only format – no audio or video. You can join the Meeting and read more about it by following the link below. All are welcome.
Wednesday Online Worship Sharing
Each Wednesday from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time, Quaker Center hosts an online Worship Sharing group. Newcomers are welcome. Click the Zoom link below to join the group.
What is Worship Sharing? During Worship Sharing, friends gather in a worshipful attitude to reflect together on a short text or quote, and some related queries (open ended questions). This activity is similar to a Quaker Meeting for Worship in that, after an initial period of silence, those present speak from their own experience and allow for silence between contributions. Participants usually speak only once, allowing some silence between each sharing, until everyone who wishes to has had a chance to share. Worship Sharing is appreciated by Quakers as a way to explore ideas together, learn and listen deeply, and to get to know one another in a meaningful way.
If you’re new to Worship Sharing, you may wish to take a look at these suggested guidelines.
This week’s quotes:
Courage changes things and courage changes us. It's how we become. I have found that there is a "right-sized" fear inside any vision for change, and in taking courageous action we develop a part of ourselves that can talk back to and hold the fear without letting it lead... The courage we need is the courage to fail and stay... The courage to exit the safety of our dying delusions... The courage to surrender... The courage to love and be loved.
~ Prentis Hemphill in WHAT IT TAKES TO HEAL: HOW TRANSFORMING OURSELVES CAN CHANGE THE WORLD
The question is no longer just how to succeed in the world. It is how to remain human in a time of unraveling, and how to become, in the deepest sense, both soulful and revolutionary: ruthless in understanding the material conditions of the age, yet still capable of love, grief, reverence, and fidelity to life. That task may require
discipline and strength, yes, but also the harder, slower, less glamorous work of entering the landscape of the soul.
~ Brad Hornick from "Masculinity and the Landscape of the Soul" on resilience.org
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Clearly hopelessness has at least as much to do with what we bring to life as it does with what life brings to us... The challenge of hopelessness is the challenge to re-enter the human race, to take our part in it knowing that it is as much our responsibility to shape life as it is for life to shape us...Hopelessness calls us beyond quitting what we cannot quit, to learn how to do what we have been born to do. Even if this means doing one thing while waiting to do another. ~ Joan Chittister in SCARRED BY STRUGGLE, TRANSFORMED BY HOPE
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We live in a time when the greatest form of courage is to act as if our lives made a difference. ~ Jean Shinoda Bolen in GODS IN EVERYMAN
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"Night is falling fast in our world; so we must learn to be gardeners in the dark." Joel Elkes (scientist/author whose family was killed by the Nazis)
This week’s queries:
- What in your life experience has oriented you towards or away from hope in dark times? Have you had an experience of recovering hope?
- What holds you back from courageous action?
- When have you surprised yourself by a courageous act?
First Wednesday evenings:
In-person Meeting for Worship
Each month on the first Wednesday, we’ll have an evening Meeting for Worship here at Quaker Center from 7:15 to 8:00 p.m. We’ll gather for an informal potluck before hand at about six. All are welcome. Call (831) 336-8333 with any questions, no need to RSVP. We usually meet in the Orchard Lodge, but look for the sign when you drive up – it will tell you where the Meeting for Worship will be held.
